Daniel makes a trip to the velobowl
Latest Friends of the Podcast episode tells the story of cycling's most prestigious hour
The Cycling Podcast is now on Substack
TL;DR: Listen to this post instead
by Lionel Birnie
I expect you can imagine my surprise when Daniel sent a message one afternoon to say he was off to the indoor cycling stadium in Grenchen. I was so stunned I nearly spat out my cappuccino.
He likes to give the impression that 60 minutes spent in a ‘velobowl’ is about 59-and-a-half minutes too long, but if his Friends of the Podcast episode, Record of Records, is anything to go by, I reckon he enjoys the thrilling swish of tyres on wooden boards much more than he lets on.
The event Daniel was heading to was Filippo Ganna’s successful assault on the men’s Hour Record at Grenchen in Switzerland back in October.
The clock is ticking right from the start of the episode because Daniel’s journey from Berlin to Switzerland – already scheduled to take eight-and-a-half hours – is made more complicated when his train is cancelled. It means there’s a race against time to get to Grenchen before the velodrome is sealed to ensure the perfect atmospheric conditions for Ganna’s ride.
Daniel’s scepticism about indoor cycling notwithstanding, the Hour Record remains the supreme test of rider and machine. It is the most elite of records, and one which has always been a combination of cutting edge sports science and aerodynamics and athletic performance. Things have moved on. Where once the areas of focus were the cyclist’s frontal area and gearing choice, the latest quest for marginal advantages include controlling the air pressure in the velodrome and the body temperature of the rider.
In 1996, Chris Boardman put the Hour Record on a shelf, so to speak, riding 56.375 kilometres using the ‘Superman’ position pioneered by Graeme Obree, on a carbon monocoque bike with five-spoke wheels, all of which were subsequently outlawed by the UCI.
The governing body felt bike technology was becoming overly significant and wanted the Hour Record to be a test of the man or woman on the track rather than the result of scientific modelling and outlandish computer-aided bike design.
As a result the rules were changed and the Hour Record mark was effectively rolled all the way back to 1972 and Eddy Merckx’s 49.431 kilometres, set at altitude in Mexico City.
It meant the Hour Record lost something. It was no longer the quest to ride as far as humanly possible in an hour. There were too many caveats. I was at Manchester velodrome in October 2000 when Chris Boardman set the new ‘Athlete’s Hour’, breaking Merckx’s record by 10 metres. Boardman used equipment similar to that available to Merckx – riding a standard-looking, albeit carbon-fibre, frame with drop handlebars and wheels with wire spokes. And yet it was a supremely scientific effort, in its own way because the tide of human curiosity cannot be held back.
In April that year, I had been at Flèche Wallonne, when Boardman broke away with Raimondas Rumsas after just 19 kilometres. The pair opened a gap of 12 minutes at one point and stayed away for more than 170 kilometres. After the race I spoke to Boardman, expecting to hear a romantic take on the heroic but doomed breakaway. Instead, I was left with the sense that Boardman’s exploits had been an experiment, pure and simple. He talked about the physical cost of the day in terms of the calories burned (around 8,500, he reckoned), which is not something I’d heard from a rider in a post-race interview before.
He later explained that his breakaway ride had been part of a data-gathering exercise ahead of the Hour Record attempt, which was to be his final farewell before retirement. He had ridden Flèche Wallonne with SRM cranks to measure his power output, he spent long stretches riding with his hands on the drops to simulate the effort of riding in one position for a sustained period.
When Ondrej Sosenka rode further than Boardman’s distance in 2005, rightly or wrongly it took away some of the prestige from the Hour Record. Sosenka was a decent professional but he was not a star and a positive doping test for him in 2008 further sullied the record.
What should have been the Blue Riband of endurance track and time trial events lacked a coherent set of rules that made sense until 2014, when the UCI cleared up the regulations for the Hour Record and bringing them into line with the existing rules for track pursuit bikes.
That meant Sosenka’s 49.7 kilometres was the distance to beat and between September 2014 and May 2015 Jens Voigt, Matthias Brändle, Rohan Dennis and Alex Dowsett took it in turns to nudge the mark up to 52.937 kilometres.
The Cycling Podcast was broadcasting live from the track centre at the London velodrome in June 2015 when Bradley Wiggins smashed Dowsett’s record. The hour passed in a blur but I remember how warm it was in the velodrome, how technically fraught our broadcast was, and that Daniel made a few jokes about the event.
Obviously, don’t tell Daniel I said this, but Record of Records is a fantastic episode, bringing the story of the Hour Record right up to date and exploring the dynamic thought and innovation behind it. Ganna was the only man on the track, of course, but there was a whole team behind the Italian ensuring he had the best possible chance of success when the clock started counting down.
Daniel talks to Dan Bigham, who was part of the HUUB-Wattbike track team, the self-styled ‘Disruptors from Derbados’. Bigham broke the record, then held by Victor Campenaerts, a couple of months before Ganna’s attempt on the same Grenchen track. To add to the intrigue, Bigham was a central part of Ganna’s Ineos Grenadiers backroom team and was also preparing for his wedding to Jos Lowden, a former holder of the women’s record, at the same time. There’s an appearance from Ciro Scognamiglio, who is shadowing Ganna now Vincenzo Nibali has retired. In landlocked Switzerland, miles from the beach and surrounded by mountains, Ciro is even further outside his comfort zone than Daniel.
Anyway, the Hour Record is now unified. There are no more caveats or distinctions between different iterations of the record. The simple fact is no one has ridden a bike on a track further in one hour than Filippo Ganna.
Sign up as a Friend of the Podcast.
A message for Friends of the Podcast
Record of Records is our third new Friends of the Podcast episode of 2022, following the three-part Story of The Cycling Podcast, created by our guest editors Jack Mckillop, Scott Emmons and Nick Busca released in February, and Girovagando: The 2022 Giro Road Trip featuring me, Daniel and Brian Nygaard.
We’re a little off the back when it comes to delivering the 11 episodes Friends of the Podcast signed up for so, as we explained last week, we’re pausing collection of subscription fees until March. If your subscription is due to renew in December, January or February payment will now be collected on March 1 and you will have uninterrupted access to the feed in the meantime. If your subscription renews at any other time, there’s no change.
Since launching the Friends of the Podcast programme in 2015, it has been a huge part of enabling us to commit to covering the three grand tours with daily coverage from Italy, France and Spain. Over the years, that funding has given us the security and confidence to develop our new shows – The Cycling Podcast Féminin, Service Course and Explore. Without our Friends of the Podcast we’d not have been able to take a creative risk on something like the Tour d’Écosse, for example.
So, over the next couple of months Friends of the Podcast can expect to see new episodes drop into their feed, with one or two scheduled between Christmas and New Year.
Pod Live Sport in London
We were honoured to be invited to appear at the Pod Live Sport event at Kings Place in London’s King’s Cross in February. The event has already unveiled some of the UK’s biggest sports podcasts among the line-up and Daniel and I – plus a special guest or perhaps even two – will be there.
The Cycling Podcast’s slot is at 4pm on Sunday, February 12 and tickets are available now. We’d love to see as many of you there as possible.
The 12 Hills of Christmas
Last December, I made an episode of Explore called, The 12 Hills of Christmas. It was based on a ride that a friend of mine, Andy Brown, devised a number of years ago and which had become something of a tradition before lockdown.
The route starts and finishes in Redbourn, Hertfordshire, on the edge of the Chilterns and takes in 12 hills and covers around 90 kilometres, zigzagging this way and that so that despite the length of the ride you’re never more than 15 kilometres from the starting point.
Sometimes we’d decorate our bikes with tinsel, or I’d stretch a Santa hat over my cycling helmet – not very aero, I know – and we’d always stop for a pint or a nice lunch.
Last year, I rode it solo, reflecting on the year just gone.
Friend of the Podcast Matt Lister recently tackled the route and made a lovely little film that you can watch on YouTube.
Every now and then I get an email asking to share the route, so I’m posting the GPX file to download.
I appreciate not everyone can travel to Not Watford to ride our 12 Hills of Christmas, so why not create a 12 Hills of Christmas route in your own area and share the route with us by emailing contact@thecyclingpodcast.com? Perhaps we can create a database of 12 Hills of Christmas routes in time for the festive period in 2023?
There’s really only one criteria – your 12 Hills of Christmas route must include 12 climbs that you consider hills. The hills can be long or short, steep or shallow, packed closely together or spread out.
This week’s episode
Our final regular episode of the year features Daniel in conversation with Jumbo-Visma manager Richard Plugge, who talks Vingegaard and Van Aert, Rog and Foss and how Tour de France victory was the culmination of a journey back from the brink. The final episode of The Cycling Podcast Féminin for 2022 is being recorded more or less as we speak and, if all goes to plan, will feature Rose’s Christmas Quiz.
Listen to the latest episodes.
Thanks for keeping us in the loop and also for recording the audio version. It's nice to have a little bit Lionel's company while you step back from the full pod.
Has anyone been involved in so many hour records such a short space of time? By my reckoning Dan Bigham has ridden two of his own and been instrumental in supporting Joss Lowden, Ganna and advising & loaning his own Argon18 bike to Fred Meredith who set a (now broken) Junior hour record back in March. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9scR2M9GWuY
I am so glad The Cycling Podcast has added this substack if for no other reason than it allows a comment or two and in particular regards the “Velobowl” episode. I listened to that recording several weeks ago unintentionally when it queue’d after another pod. Like Daniel I typically find hour rides (and time trials) to be a little dull. On the contrary Daniel’s retelling of Ganna’s effort was outstanding - the pacing, background, interviews and overall format made it one of the best stories I have EVER listened to. The podcasting version of long form journalism at its best. And a Cirro cameo was icing on the cake so to speak. Very well done Mr Friebe!